LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.. Copyright No. 

Shelf.._.__^iA.^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ROBERT BURNS 

AN ODE 

ON THE 

CENTENARY of his DEATH 

1796— 1896 



By HUNTER MacCULLOCH 

Author of ''From Dawn to Dusk, and other Poems.'* 



^^\^o-2^'^ 



Brooklyn, New York 

THE ROSE AND THISTLE PUBLISHING CO. 

430 Van Buren Street. 

Copyright, 1896, by The Rose and Thistle Publishing Co. 




AFFECTIONATELY DEDtCATED 

lO THE 

MEMORY 

OF 

SARAH HUNTER 

(OF BARRHEAD) 
AND 

GEORGE MacCULLOCH 

OF PAISLEY) 

BY THEIR SON 

THE AUTHOR 

HUNTER MacCULLOCH 

(OF GLASGOW) 



BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, U. S. A. 



:>^ 

^ 






1 ROBERT BURNS: AN ODE. 



-^ '^' /^^H ! lion-rampant land ! 

V_y That threats on either hand 
r^ An ocean and a sea : 

*- Oh ! land whose hill and glen 

Bred ever brave, free men 

Who vowed no thralls to be ! 

Drove back their foes and saved their home ; 

Unconquered by the world's proud conqueror, Rome ! 

Land of a thousand spells 

That hold the spirit fast : 
The misty hills where bloomi the heather-bells ; 
The heathy moors and windy fells 

Where thistles brave the bitter blast; 
The placid loch, the torrent tumbling o'er the linn; 
The forest deep and all the life therein ; 

The burn that wimples past 
The feet of shapely birk and sheltering rowan ; 

The lea-rigs green and knowes 

Where stray the sheep that browse; 
The tawny broom; the starry, gold-eyed gowan 
That fringe the winding path 

Past hawthorne, hazel bush and brier 
Down brae to glen or strath ; 

And that melodious and entrancing choir 
Whose music haunts the soul for aye, 

The lint-white's lilt, the cushat's coo, 
The laverock's lay 

Uplifting into heaven's blue, 
The strains the mavis pours, so thrilling, sweet and 
gay. 

Oh ! land our pride and boast ! 



4 ROBERT BURNS: 

Whose indentated coast, 

From Solway winding tortuous to the north, 
Past Pentland onward down to Firth of Forth, 

Mimics the convoluted plan 

Of the brain of nature's lord and master, man. 

Then Brain-land be she named. 

This land for men so famed : 

Her soldiers, nerved to action with the thought 

Of that immortal day at Bannockburn; 
Her preachers by that fearless preacher taught, 

Who for no queen would from his duty turn ; 
Her workmen, thorough, patient, skilful, wise, 

Like he who made a flying horse of steam; 
Her thinkers seeking truth with eagle eyes ; 

Her poets with their land for grandest theme ; 
Her singers, sons and daughters of the soil, 
Who sang to ease and sweeten irksome toil. 
Their praise would need, indeed, a story long. 
These makers of auld Scotia's glory, song ! 

O sorceress Song ! 

At a wave of whose beckoning wand 
We follow her utterly, gladly along 

Under the spell of her mystical bond 

To the ends of the earth and beyond ! 
Hark ! from aloft and around 
A ravishing sound — 
Songs without words till the words be found 

In the treasure-house vast 

Of the past. 

Where sad things and glad are forever made fast. 
In the future before us so gloomy or bright 
With the hopes that allure or the fears that affright : 
Sad is the nightingale, suiting our woe; 



1 



A CENTENARY ODE. 

Glad is the robin, recalling life's spring; 
From lark, thrush and linnet what memories flow, 
When the wood-sirens sing ! 

Yet sweeter far than these 
Sojourners in the trees, 

How sweet soe'er their melody that floats 

Upon mellifluous notes — 
Sweeter than these. 

There stands the perfect choice, 
That living organ with a thousand keys : 

The human voice ! 

Oh ! marvelous instrument ! the wreath to win 

From yearning flute 

And tender lute. 
From witching bird and wizard violin ! 
Music with words — 
Man's speech and voice of birds — 

The master-singer's song, 

From birth till death it goes with us along : 
That earliest singer, mother, 
She, and none other. 

Lulling to sleep with song as soft as sigh, 

Her lullaby ; 
That later singer, he, 
Of fervid minstrelsy, 

Who lavishes his happy heart in song, 
Singing of only she, 

To whom alone his life and love belong ; 
The battle hymn that nerves to do and die. 
Death's dreadful lullaby ; 
The songs of home, alas ! 
That it should come to pass ! 
Their cruel sweetness kills, 



6 ROBERT BURNS: 

And with keen anguish ends the exile's ills. 

So, up and down life's way 

Wait madrigal and glee, 
Chant, hymn, psalm, roundelay: 

A chain of poesy 
Wherewith to solace, praise, cheer, mourn, rejoice, 
Whatso the travelers' need or choice. 

Well said the sage : 

Be mine the lyric page, ' ' 

And let who will 

The musty law books fill. 
The mightiest scepter rightfully belongs 
To him who truly sings a people's songs ! 

II. 

What sister spirits these who stay the wing — 

One dark as night and one like morning fair — 

Above yon clay-built cottage hovering, 
A long Scots mile from Ayr ? 

The Angel of life who brings her gift of breath ; 

Her somber shadow, she, the Angel of death. - 

These spirits side by side 

Fly far and w^ide, 

To work alternate what they must : 

One turning dust to man, one turning man to dust ! 

Upon their fateful way 

This same midwinter day 

These twain had traversed \illage, city, town, 

Of great or small renown; 

And human habitations entered all. 

The palace, castle, cottage, manor-house and hall ; 

And gave or took, 



8 ROBERT BURNS : 

As it was written for them in Fate's book. ^ 

What wonder this ! 

The choicest gift both rank and riches miss ! 
For 'neath no castle's roof that infant lay, 
But housed within a cottage built of clay. 

Within a week at height of storm at night, 

This humble, clay-built cot was overthrown : 

The mother and her babe escaped by flight, 

Since doomed not then, else had we never knowrt 

The pulse of pride, the glow of pure delight 

With which the bard then born is hailed our own. 

Oh ! flimsy nest to shelter bird so rare ! 

So soon by winds of heaven to shattered be — 
Or was it wild weird spirits of the air 

By midnight's bell set free ? 
Warlocks and witches sporting in the mirk. 
Hieing to AUoway's auld haunted Kirk ? 

Oh ! lowly nest of Scotland's rarest bird ! 
Her bonnie, bonnie bird ! 

Whose songs the heart's profoundest depths have 
stirred ; 

Those tender songs and sad, 

Sweet, somber, merry-mad, 
Four generations joyfully have heard 
Above a tuneful aviary warbling well, 
Enraptured by the soul-inspiring spell ! 

HI. 

Unique, delicious joy ! 
Her first-born — and a boy ! 
How happy, happy she 

To watch the 'wakening soul forth reach,. 



A CENTENARY ODE. 9 

Touch, taste, smell, hear, and see ; 

And use with tiny tongue 
The cunning tool of speech— . 

And all a mother's lore of tale and song 
The little one to teach. 

As well the father's joy, 
The cotter's first-born boy. 

That like his trees and shrubs, his fields and 
flowers, 

Quickening beneath the sunshine and the 
showers, 
His earnest thoughts employ. 
This wondrous plant unfolding at his hearth. 

He nurtures with a father's loving care. 
This thoughtful man of sterling worth. 

And of devotion rare. 
For gladly will he drudge 

From early morn till night. 
No toil or trouble grudge 

To fit his child aright. 
With knowledge, wherewithal to wage a strife 
Victorious in this lifelong struggle, life ! 

From mother's lessons learning how to feel. 

He heeds the heart's appeal ; 

By father taught his 'prentice mind to use. 

He masters skill to choose : 

Then up and away how glad he is to go 

Into the wondrous world of thought. 
Whose boundaries none can know, 

Though fourscore years he sought. 
A wondrous world, indeed. 

That snugly fits the mind of child and youth. 
And serves as well man's need. 



10 ROBERT BURNS: 

Nor yet confines the sage in search of truth : 
A child can in its clutch this fabric hold, 
Yet all man's mind conceives it can enfold. 
On wholesome, rude 
Material, mental food, 
Alike his soul and body grew apace 
In stature, strength, and grace. 
How strange to see 

From selfsame sunlight, moisture, air and soil 
Such vast diversity 

Reward the cotter's toil : 
In kind, in color, foliage, fruit, and flower — 
Oh ! magic seed to hold such protean power ! 

And all the while the mystery of mind 

We cannot solve not yet escape. 
The plastic cage wherein the soul's confined, 

Was growing into shape : 
And all the while the all-pervasive power 

That keeps our conscious states in our control. 
Fusing the fleeting with the finished hour, 

The gravitation of the human soul — 
Mysterious memory — 
Was busy as the bee, 

Life's treasure-trove exploring, 

Cell after cell with honey hourly storing, 
From fields and meadows, woods and brooks, 
From the life about him and the life in books : 
And all the while the cotter's helpful lad 

A boy's share of the cotter's burden bore. 
Nor at his servile lot was sad, 

But doing daily more and more. 
Until to plow, sow, reap, and thrash he learns the art, 
And a full man's round of duties was his part. 



A CENTENARY ODE. ii 

IV. 

'Twas at his daily toil 

This cheerful prisoner of the soil, 

Out in the fields at harvest time, 
By bonnie Nellie's side, " sweet sonsie lass," 

He heard the captivating chime of rhyme ; 
For then it came to pass 

His soul awoke, 

And into bud the rough bark broke : 
A beam of light upon his being beat, 
A ray of heat, 

Transforming ear so dull, 

And voice untunable ; 
Giving the fledgling music wings 

To soar to the heavens above, 
As there his earliest song he sings — 

A song of love ! . 

Love ! irresistible, subtile affinity ! 

Lo ! at a touch, at a glance it is sped : 
Ever and everywhere present divinity ; 

Seeking and finding twin spirits to wed. 
Love ! recreator with marvels confounding us. 

Dumb souls and weak making eloquent, strong ; 
Changing the nature of nature surrounding us : 

Hear her praise chanted by hand-maiden song, 
Love ! inspiration that stirs and empowers us, 

Greatly to do and more greatly to dare ; 
While with life's diadem, happiness, dowers us. 

Life at the side of our loved one to share. 

Love found him in the field — 
Oh ! blessed harvest time 
Such harvest s-ince lo yield 



12 ROBERT BURNS: 

Of love-exalting rhyme : 
The key-note of his lyre in love he found, 
And o'er and o'er came forth the rapturous sound, 
Until with one acclaim love's laureate was he 
crowned. 

V. 
Hear how the years, 
Freighted with hopes and fears, 

And sped by joys or led by sorrows, 
Evolving slow or fast 

The sad or glad to-morrows — 
Hear how the years with our sweet singer passed. 

Our singer then, in sooth. 

An awkward, shy, ungainly youth ;: 

Devouring all the books within his ken. 

Snatching a week of schooling now and then. ; 
Off to Kirkoswald, on the Firth of Clyde,. 
To learn with love and Euclid side by side : 

For now again his muse takes- wing. 
Inspired by beauty, youth and grace, 

Another angel's praise to sii^g ;• 
For -lovely Peggy takes sweet Nellie's place.. 

VI. 

Now with the cotter's family onward: wej 
To the famous farm Lochlea, 

By fragrant memories great ; 
Where from youth's bondage free, 

Our singer entered m.an's estate. 
Then in Tarbolton's Bachelors' Club, 
Of seven wise lads— folk in derision dub — 



A CENTENARY ODE. 13 

Acquires he there of speech complete command, 
Wherein his teeming thoughts to fitly dress, 

Astounding literati of the land, 

To hear a peasant thus himself express. 

A cheerful, honest-hearted lad was he, 
Even then the best of all good company ; 

A comrade, curious, zealous, dexterous, bold, 
To whom, as parish priest of love was told 
The secrets of Tarbolton's rustic lover. 
Assured Past-master Robin would discover 
Some way to give a happy turn to care, 
Or clever scheme devise to circumvent the fair. 

From love to marriage just one step the more ; 

Yet, though he knows how lassies to adore, 
He fills his first proposal with dry phrases, 
The lady lost her way within their mazes, 

And gently pushed the proffered hand aside, 

Declining to become the plowman's bride. 

Misfortunes by misfortune bred 

Rained down upon the plowman's head, 
He quits the soil to learn the trade 
Of dressing flax, with kinsman's aid; 

But stock and store were swept with fire, 

Which proved the end of that desire. 

While here at Irvine life looked dark. 
And sickness of the soul oppressed, 

When in the trough of the sea life's barque 
No more will mount the mantling crest : 

Ambition aimed and missed her mark. 
And now dissatisfied, depressed, 

No part in life was there for such as he. 

And all things seemed, indeed, but vanity. 



14 ROBERT BURNS: 

But every hollow has its height ; 

And to life's shipwrecked sailor land's in sight \ 

And, oh ! delightful, charming land ! 

Whose joys he hastes to share 
With a jovial, lawless band, 

In the land of deil-ma-care, 
Where all are careless, gay, and free — 
Such his rebound from gloom to gaiety. 

The cotter father, loving and austere, 

Whose weary life was nearly run. 
Beheld this reckless phase with fear 

And grave misgivings for his gifted son : 
And filled with dire forebodings for his lad, 

Albeit, too, with pride all unconfessed. 
Gave up life's struggle, long, heroic, sad ; 

Laid down life's weary load, forevermore to rest I 

VII. 

Still follow we 

The fatherless family 

To Mossgiel farm, famed place of birth 

Of Scotia's rarest flovvers of rhyme ; 
Now met with over all the earth. 

Surviving still the storms of time. 

'Twas here unto the Mauchline minstrel came 

The trumpet blast of fame ! 

From here his wise and witty shafts were sent ; 

'Twas here he found his mission and his wife ; 
And here his four most precious years were spent — 

The heyday of his life ! 

Oh ! bubbling, bright bouquet 
On life's delicious draught, 



A CENTENARY ODE. 15 

So soon to pass away, 

Once only quaffed ; 
And nevermore to know, 

Though Hfe sends years in plenty. 
The speed, the strength, the glow, 
The fervor and the flow — 

Life's flood-tide, five-and-twenty ! 

True son of genius, needing not to roam 

'I o distant climes. 

Or ancient times. 
He finds before him here at home 

The warp and woof of his immortal rhymes. 
For his the power to make rough nature fine, 

To change the commonplace to new and choice, 
To draw a landscape in a line. 

To utter peasants' thoughts with poet's voice. 
His keen-eyed mind sees into men and things, 

And by imagination, vivid, strong, 
And borne on rhythm's swift and tireless wings, 

He pours a torrent forth of matchless song : 
Here was the place and now the time 
To put his pathos, satire, humor into rhyme. 

Now from this garden rare 

With wealth of bloom so bright. 
He plucks a posy fair, 

As fit to please the sight 
As all the flowers from lily 'round to rose ; 

And craves his countrymen to cast a look 
On what within his fancy's garden grows, 

Here pressed within the pages of a book. 

Oh ! keen delight ! 

Of new-born, first-born book the sight ! 




ROBERT BURNS. 

From the Portrait by Alexander Nasmyth. 



A CENTENARY ODE. 17 

Ah ! many souls there be, 
Run proverb as it may, 

Such joy shall never see ; 
For will can find no way. 

Oh, book ! at once so little and so great ; 

That dies before its author dies unknown ; 
Or lives, if such shall be its happier fate. 

While crumbles States to dust like costliest 
shafts of stone ! 

VIII. 

Now when the wise men of the east 

Beheld this western star, 
Whose light was as a feast, 

They journey not afar. 
But bid the poet come to learning's seat — 

For rich and noble from their lucky place. 
And critic dons and dominies discreet. 

Were curious to trace 
The Ayrshire plowman poet's form and face. 

The message came, 

And at the thrilling note of fame 

From plow to parlor, chasm deep and wide. 
Our genius takes it at a single stride. 

Then manly, simple, conscious of his worth, 

He sets about unwittingly to charm 
With speech of one of equal rank and birth — 

Since he had left his Doric* at the farm. 
The witchery of his words o'er all was cast, 

Grave, gay, pathetic, simple, solemn, wise ; 
As through emotion's wide domain he passed, 

Blazing a pathway with those glowing eyes. 



i8 ROBERT BURNS: 

A will-o'-the-wisp Edina's luring light, 

That led him through the marsh of discontent, 

Whereby was wrought a deep, insidious blight ; 
His strength by false ambition's fever spent. 



IX. 



Eventful 'Eighty-six ! 

Such sweet and bitter in life's cup to mix [ 

Most memorable year of all his thirty-seven, 

That gave alternate tastes of hell and heaven : 
Receiving homage in the easy chair of fame ; 
And doing penance in the church's seat of shame ! 
Now is he stung and maddened to despair, 

And at an end seems life's distressful story ; 
Now is forgotten, trial, trouble, care ; 

He scales the height of fame and seizes glory !! 

As every risen sun hastes co descend. 
His year-long holiday came to an end. 

Now Death's apology the poet too must heed : 
" Folk maun do something for their bread." 
So, homeward turns he to his native west, 
And all made haste to speed the parting guest. 
Nor was there at the parting any sorrow ; 
They recked not how he fared upon the morrow. 
To buy his book and praise him was the fee 
They paid him for his charming company. 

So slight the tie, a breath could break away : 
He might have been the lover in a play, 
And now through different doors they homeward go^ 
And how the actor fared they never cared to know. 



A CENTENARY ODE. 



X. 



And so from " Scotia's darling seat " 

The greatest singer she has ever known, 
Shaking her dust from off his feet, 

Returns unto his own. 
The long-neglected plow he guides forthwith, 

And joined in family bonds for life. 
Settles at Ellisland upon the Nith, 

With bonnie Jean for wife. 

Fate to his lost Highland Mary seemed cruel. 

Although had she lived, perhaps, crueler far ; 
The distance of death to his flame added fuel, 

When dairymaid Mary became as a star. 
But kinder was fate into sighing Sylvander 

In keeping our swain and Clarinda apart ; 
In bombast and tinsel what masquer struts grander 

In a serio-comic affair of the heart. 
And then 'round the compass by fancy driven. 

Under some " heavenly creature's " sway ; 
To hold him for long unto none was given. 

Since Jean was his polar star fixed for aye. 
This greatest of lovers 

The world has seen. 
His true love discovers 

In bonnie Jean ! 

His fervent soul's queen, 

Oh ! comely lass, country lass, Jean ! 
Handsome her figure, her temper so sweet ; 
Heart of the kindest, she stands complete : 

Knowing her Bible and ballads a store, 
With wood-notes the finest — what needs she the 
more ? 



20 R OBER T B URNS : 

O, adorable dove ! 
Whose genius was love : 

Whose utter devotion, 

A measureless ocean ; 
Whose mission as wife 
Shed the sunlight of love o'er his workaday life ! 

XI. 

When life's supreme ev&nt came to an end 

And the empty-handed present turned away, 
Then from the height he hastened to descend, 

Returning to the past's delightful day, 
The plowshare and the scythe again to guide ; 

Again to mow the grass, to cleave the sward ; 
To see his native muse, fair Coila, at his side, 

And have her crown again her rustic bard : 
Again shall fancy lure his soul away. 

And set him weaving Doric verses fine, 
Amid the drudging labor of the day ; 

For fast as forming furrow grows the line. 

But ah ! the past has passed him by for aye ! 
How shall he overtake the vanished day ? 
For now the voice of fame 

Is ringing in his ears ; 
No more is life the same 

As in those earlier years. 
Of high desert made well aware, 

And keenly conscious of his low estate. 
Now newly hard to bear. 

He holds with tyrant fate 
An enervating strife ; 
So loth is he "to drudge behind the scenes of life." 



^ 



22 ROBERT BURNS: 

Half-heartedly the farmer wrought, 

The soil returned in equal measure ; 

Half-heartedly the poet thought, 
And likewise was his treasure. 

Then Scotia, cauldrife dame, 

Threw at him — shame to tell ! — 
A gift unworthy her great name 

And his great fame as well : 
Since as reward for song beyond compare 
She made a gauger of the Bard of Ayr ! 

xn. 

Then saddest fate befell : 

He bids the farmers' life farewell ! 

Farewell to all familiar sounds and sights ; 

Farewell to banks and braes of Nith and Doon ; 
Farewell to nature's unalloyed delights. 

As sweet in memory as a day in June. 

A laverock forced to leave the sky and woods. 
And dwell withi • a common cage — a town, 

Well filled with gossips and with goods, 

And envious birds to drag the laverock down. 

The Mauchline Minstrel and the Bard of Ayr, 

The Ayrshire Plowman and the Bard of Kyle, 

'Tis ever he, the selfsame singer rare, 
Whate'er the happy style : 

But of all titles surely this the lees : 

The Ganger of Dumfries ! 

Ah ! at thy name, Dumfries, 

What direful visions rise : 
Vain struggle, failure, pain, disease, 



A CENTENARY ODE. 23 

Drear days and leaden skies ! 
Dumfries ! the scene of such ignoble strife, 
The fifth act of his tragedy of life. 



XIII. 

Since from the captive bird 
Delicious strains of melody are heard, 

In life's dark days from out his spirit's prison 

The peasant poet's choicest songs have risen. 
From carking care and grief, 

From torturing thoughts that throng, 
■He snatches sweet relief 

In swallow-flights of song. 

'O, singer sweet ! whose rustic voice endears ; 
In nature's college bred for thirty years. 

His genuine genius never plays a part, 
No hearsay his, he sang whereof he knew ; 

Nature and truth his themes to stir the heart ; 
His fragrant flowers are yet wet with the dew. 
He knew the people's language, feeling, thought ; 

Their native nobleness to him was dear ; 
'Twas for his kin, the people, that he wrought 

Unto his latest year. 
Their own true songs, rich, racy and sincere ! 

XIV. 

Ah ! sorrowful indeed the story 

That shows our Samson stripped of strength^ 

And even of life, at length — 
Though never shorn of glory ! 

How strong, how keen the zest 



24 ROBERT BURNS: 

Of life, these last four years attest : 
A willing slave unto his social sense, 

That beat in unison with all mankind. 
For whom he felt a fellowship intense, 

Whate'er their lot — laird, peasant ; rude, refined. 
Even tourists, patrons of the muse, forsooth ! 

Could tempt with invitations to the -Globe, 
And waste his time and talent without ruth, 

And soil with tavern stains his singing robe. 
His fervid temperament he could not stay ; 
And wanting will he threw his life away. 

Oh, drink ! man's boon and bane ! 

Great deadener of pain: 

The pangs of poverty that millions feel 

Are lulled to sleep by that specific, drink. 
Which with their senses doth their misery steal, 

And lets them dream at ease on ruin's brink. 
Oh, drink ! the poor man's riciies for a night, 

Wherewith he buys his longed-for heart's desire, 
And o'er it revels till the morning light 

Reveals his riches as a burned-out fire. 
Well-fed reformer, read this verse and think : 
No poverty would make a drug of drink. 

A keener pang than hunger's pierced his breast. 
The fiercer hunger of the human soul : 

Success grown dim, and ease not yet possessed, • 
And heart-sick hope that cannot reach her goal. 

By failure cast adrift upon life's sea. 

With fate's remorseless billows to contend. 

His shipwrecked selves then strive for mastery. 

And well we know which triumphed in the endi 



26 • ROBERT BURNS : 

Then lashed by wind and wave 'neath heaven's frown 
With half a voyage to make life's barque went down ! 



XV. 

The curtain falls, as fall it must, 

And dust-made man turns man-made dust. 
There lies the selfsame open grave 
Before the peasant, king, or slave. 

None can escape the common doom 

Of pride, wealth, power, want, worth — the tomb. 
When death commands all must obey : 
The ruler leave his realm for aye ; 

The statesman from his game resign ; 

The master quit his mill or mine ; 

The captain drop his gleaming sword ; 

The miser leave his useless hoard ; 

The merchant's fingers loose the pen ; 
And all the ranks and files of men 

At Death's command cease everything — 

So Scotia's bird, shot on the wing. 

The world's great singer ceased to sing. 

One of the world's great singers gone ! 

Ah ! little then they knew 
This hundredth year would dawn 

And bring not yet in view 
In his beloved land 
A singer worthy at his side to stand. 

O, singer ! tropic born ; 

Withgiant strength so lightly worn, 

With soul by simoom passion torn ; 

Whose vast emotions know 

Such fearful ebb and flow ! 



A CENTENARY ODE. 27 

With all the power that in true poets live, 
Superlative ! 

XVI. 

The world's great singer needs must be 
•Greatly a man and loftily ; 
And such a man and such a singer he. 
By noble aspiration deep imbued, 

With sense of wit and humor strong and keen, 
Clear-sighted, swift, sagacious, shrewd, 

With common sense for daily life's routine ; 
His vigorous mind was wrought and rounded well, 
He chose to sing just as the chance befell, 
Although in any field well fitted to excel. 

:So pdor, so proud ! 
His spirit stands unbowed 
Before both insolent power and wealth, 

Since scorning to be base. 
And think and speak by stealtli 

Or lose his petty place. 
'He dares to independent be 
In life as well as poetry, 

To square the singer with the man, 
-And be the thing he vowed, 

And brave the galling ban — 
Alas ! so poor, so proud ! 

.A child by whim and fancy led, 

With folly far too oft at play ; 
Whose feelings ruled in reason's stead ; 

A man of moods alway : 
His nature knew no middle course, 
iHe loved and hated with the selfsame fervent force. 



28 ROBERT BURNS: 

His simple faith told in a clause 

Would never stir up strife : 
Created by a great First Cause, 

For everlasting life. 

At robed religion's voice he drew not near, 
While her essentials ready to revere. 

He never bent the knee 

To Czar theology ; 
Nor schooled his generous soul to dwell 

With cold divinity : 
His heart surrendered to human spell 
Of that humanity he knew and loved so well. 

Simple in faith, in works not wise. 

His right good-will endears : 
Were his the power he from all eyes 

" Would wipe away all tears." 

Oh ! sympathetic bond of breath ! 

That crives its terrors to the touch of death. 

Age burdened by the weight of years, 

Is loth to let the burden fall, 
And all too soon the summons hears 

Which comes at last to all. 
But he, our masted-singer, went away 
To midnight from midday ! 

When stayed was hand and mute the strings, 
What wealth of song remained unsung ; 

The ruthless hand destruction brings 
At once to mother bird and young. 

But sadder still to know 
Than even death's cruel blow, 
The thought of wasted, precious time 
That ran in toil and penury away,. 



A CENTENARY ODE, 29 



Unminted into precious rhyme 

To serve as current coin for aye. 



XVII. 

Alas ! that life of fragments fine ! 

No epic grand but now and then a line. 

For fitfully his genius wrought 

With her stupendous power, 
And framed in verse the passion, thought, 

And humor of the hour : 

When canting Holy Willie prays, 
His rhyming cat-o'-nine-tails flays ; 

When Dr. Hornbook vaunts his smattering lore, 
He meets with Death and talks the doctor o'er ; 
His wild experience in th'e public house 
Sets Jolly Beggars on a grand carouse ; 

The timorous Mouse and modest Daisy yield 
Two tender poems born out in the field ; 
On solitary, wandering, storm-tossed way 
He hears that matchless ode of " Scots wha hae;" 
While Tam o' Shanter, that immortal work, 
Was writ to fit as text to Alloway Kirk ! 

How marvelously quick and strong, 

How delicate the touch ; 
To force from adverse fate such wealth of song. 

Out of so little to have wrought so much. 

But, ah ! had fate not driven ; 

Had life had less of strife ; 
Had time — true wealth — been given ; 

And length of life, 




BURNS'S MAUSOLEUM, DUMFRIES. 



A CENTENARY ODE. 31 

What wealth had then been ours to share, 
The tenfold riches left us by the Bard of Ayr. 



XVIII. 

Through forty coming centuries range, 

Be thrilled by all the wonders wrought ; 
But mark in midst of marvelous change 

The selfsame feeling, selfsame thought 
Our Scottish peasant poet found 

By banks of Cessnock, Nith, and Ayr; 
Then learn anew this truth profound : 

Man's heart knows neither now, then, here, or 
there ; 

But beats the same forever, everywhere ! 

Dead for a hundred years we say. 
Yet lives he still to-day, 
And will alway ! 

His noble name will never die, 

His fadeless fame will never pass. 
While song still scales the sky, 

While love links lad and lass. 



"m^ 



32 ROBERT BURNS : AN ODE. 

(CORANACH.) 

Scots wha dwell in Scotia dear, 
Scotsmen scattered far and near, 
Friends of Burns come shed a tear 

To his memory. 
Sad the fate of Scotia's bard 
Weary was his lot and hard 
Even to the cauld kirkyard— 

There frae sorrows free. 

Hear his voice, a century still, 

Echo yet frae glen and hill, 

Sounds that soothe and charm, and thrill, 

Sweet the melody. 
Master of a noble art, 
Bidding smile or tear to start. 
Singing straight frae heart to heart. 

Such his mastery. 
Now on this memorial day 
Praise him in a heartfelt lay 
Lads and lassies while you may. 

Sing this dirge wi' me : 
Lang as modest daisy grows. 
Thistles guard 'gainst Scotia's foes, 
Bonnie Doon sae saftly flows. 

Lives his memory ! 



THE END. 



